Blockchain website review
BitPay , a notable exception, received January seed funding and has stayed true to payments processing, allowing merchants to transact in bitcoin. Farther-ranging blockchain applications have also seen venture backing, especially as the conversation has shifted from Bitcoin to blockchain at large. Private blockchains — as opposed to public blockchains, like Bitcoin and Ethereum — are often run by centralized administrators and customized for internal organizational use cases, making them more palatable to corporate interests concerned with privacy and security.
More corporates are starting to invest in the sector, with the number of active corporate investors rising to a new high of 91 in YTD. Notably, the number of active corporate investors is closing in on the same metric for VCs, which has seen 95 active investors in YTD. Japan-based SBI Holdings is the top corporate investor, with investments into 8 unique blockchain companies.
Google comes in second, with 6 investments that span private enterprise services LedgerX , and merchant services Veem. The firm — which is the third most active corporate investor — recently announced the launch of T Zero t0 , a blockchain-based trading platform for capital markets. In addition to investing, banks have also partnered with blockchain companies and other corporates on blockchain trials and projects. Consortia fall somewhere between private enterprise blockchains and public blockchains.
This creates a middle option, offering both the security of private blockchains a requirement by many corporations and the network effects of public blockchains. Collaboration is definitely not a given, especially in the highly competitive fields such as financial services that blockchain is immediately targeting. Digital Asset a private blockchain and Blockstream a bitcoin-focused engineering outfit have since contributed codebases to Hyperledger, implying continued cooperation between private blockchains, public blockchains, and consortia.
In July , Hyperledger announced a production-ready blockchain, Fabric 1. JP Morgan Chase and Microsoft announced early on that they would be utilizing Ethereum to develop their own blockchain offerings — JP Morgan with its in-house private blockchain, Quorum, and Microsoft with its blockchain-as-a-service module for Azure.
The EEA diverges from Hyperledger in its governance. Microsoft and the EEA plan to utilize the public Ethereum blockchain, and have little say in its technical development. The consortium has also announced the creation of seven working groups, including healthcare, supply chain, and insurance, though trials and proofs-of-concept have yet to seriously materialize.
However, R3 still counts more than member banks and financial services firms, and is forging ahead on a number of projects and partnerships. Venture investors are still looking for real blockchain usage beyond speculation, as most teams exploring blockchain use-cases have been hard pressed to find users. This is an immediate requirement for the sector to mature. Judging from the data presented in this report, though, the future seems bright, as investment in blockchain technology evolves in new and innovative ways.
As the landscape evolves, the future of investment in the space will likely take on forms yet to be imagined. In August , Blockchain. Also in August , Blockchain. In March , Blockchain. In May , Blockchain. Transaction volume had exceeded million by August, In September , Blockchain. In January , Blockchain. According to the announcement, the company plans to continue adding services for US-based clients, including Ether and Bitcoin Cash exchanges in coming days.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved 23 February The Wall Street Journal blogs. The New York Times. Retrieved 16 June History Economics Legal status.